Television programs are an important source of information and entertainment in today's society. In the past, broadcast television dominated the airwaves. Simply put, a handful of major content providers would be allocated certain broadcast frequencies by the local authorities. Over the years, alternative methods of delivering television were invented, and television service providers, sometimes also referred to as broadcast distribution undertakings (BDUs) emerged. These included cable and satellite providers at first and, more recently, providers of Internet access and video-over-Internet. In a typical situation, a television service provider enters into an agreement with multiple broadcasters and other content providers to deliver their respective content to the television service provider's customers.
In some socio-demographic markets, a given content provider's content may be so sought after that distribution rights may be given to only those television service providers that are willing to pay a premium. Conversely, some geographic markets dominated by a small number of television service providers may present a must-have penetration opportunity for a given content provider. In the latter case, the given content provider may wish to entice target television service providers to carry a particular channel. One mechanism for achieving this consists of providing, to a given television service provider, certain promotional time slots for sale or internal use by the given television service provider and its affiliates. These time slots are sometimes referred to in the industry as “ad avails”.
While ad avails provide a significant opportunity for television service providers to generate revenue and promote themselves (e.g., by advertising the content of their own channels), one of the problems with ad avails involves the time instants at which they are rendered available by the content provider. Specifically, ad avails tend to occur on an ad hoc basis. Consequently, ad avails are typically used to promote services that do not have a time-sensitive component. Alternatively, time-sensitive services may be promoted, but with unsatisfactory effects due to the randomness inherent in the time instants at which the ad avails occur.
Against this background, there is a need in the industry to harness greater potential from the use of ad avails despite their quasi-random nature, particularly in the promotion of television programs.